Boggsville Historic Site, 3.5 hours southeast of Denver, includes a 39-acre National Register District with two early territorial-style adobe structures, the 1866 Boggs House and the 1867 Prowers house. The site is owned by the Pioneer Historical Society of Bent County and operated as a seasonal interpretive museum.

Like many small historic sites, Boggsville has operated with a bare bones budget and has struggled with deferred maintenance and a lack of funding for staff, marketing, and programming. Boggsville needs to look at the use and the management of the site to ensure long-term sustainability.

As one of the first permanent Anglo communities in the Arkansas River valley, Boggsville heralded the arrival of a new culture on the prairies of southeastern Colorado – one based on farming and ranching. Hispanic and Native American peoples had long claimed this region, and both still had a strong presence in 1866, the year Boggsville was established.

Much of the land Boggsville occupied was acquired through Thomas Bogg’s Mexican wife, Rumalda Luna Boggs, whose great-uncle (Mexican businessman Cornelio Vigil) controlled millions of Colorado acres through Spanish land grants.

John Prowers’ Cheyenne wife, Amache Ochinee Prowers, was the daughter of Cheyenne Chief Lone Bear, who died at the nearby Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. As part of the reparations to tribes, Amache was able to acquire the land that became part of her husband’s extensive open range holdings.

Boggsville is a certified site on the Santa Fe Trail and was the final home of the legendary Kit Carson. William Bent was also part of the Boggsville story, which spans a unique time in history – the period between the death of the fur trades and Santa Fe Trail and the rise of modern towns.